“This!” he answered.
Magin watched him. He did not catch the connection at first. He saw it quickly enough, however. In his pale translucent eyes there was something very like a flare.
“Look out—or we shall go together after all!”
“We shall go together, after all,” repeated Gaston. “And here is your place in the sun!”
Magin still watched, as the little flame flickered through the windless air. But he did not move.
“It will go out! And you have not the courage, Apache!”
“You will see, Prussian!” The match stopped, at last, above the open hole. But the hand that held it trembled a little, and so did the strange low voice that said: “This at least I can do—for that great lady, far away....”
VIII
The peasant on the bluff, prostrated toward Mecca with his forehead in the dust, was startled out of his prayer by a roar in the basin below him. There where the trimwhite jinn-boat of the Firengi had been was now a blazing mass of wreckage, out of which burst fierce cracklings, hissings, cries, sounds not to be named.
As he stared at it the wreckage fell apart, began to disappear in a cloud of smoke and steam that lengthened toward the southern gateway of the basin. And in the turbid water, cut by swift sharks’ fins, he saw a sudden streak of scarlet, vivider than any fire or sunrise. The sounds ceased, the dyed waters paled, the smoke melted after the steam, the current caught the last charred fragments of wreckage and drew them out of sight.